To have your favorite book character come to life at your fingertips opens up a world of imagination for a child.

That very idea is what Sunnyvale’s Guy Ziv is hoping will motivate local youth to pick up more books and read with their parents.

Concerned that their children preferred Netflix over reading, Ziv and his wife, Pazit, created MyDollBookSeries, a series of three books that incorporates a doll as the hero of the book.

The child uses the doll to take part in making and completing the story as narrated by the parent. By physically placing the doll on each page where colorful scenes are missing the main character, the child completes the picture.

“The whole idea that we have is we want to have this bonding time with the parents,” Ziv said. “The child has to animate the doll, has to move it and put it in the right place to fit the description. Reading the story becomes interactive and is something that the child and parent can do together.”

A research scientist at Stanford University by day, Ziv said he and his wife, an educator with K-12 teaching experience, always stressed the importance of reading for their 7-, 4- and 2-year-olds.

“I think any kind of scientific education is definitely needed and there is a big push for science education statewide and nationwide, but the starting point is the basic skills of comprehension, concentration and being able to communicate,” Ziv said. “Reading is one of the ways where you acquire those skills, so this is, for me, why reading is so important.”

With patents pending, the Zivs plan to release the first three books in the series, Guy finds a Butterfly, Guy is making Cupcakes and Guy visits his Grandparents. The books are designed for boys and girls ages 3-7. Children can use either the doll that comes with the book or their own.

“On top of having fun with a doll and a fun story with the warmth of an adult, this situation in which a child is ‘role playing’ a doll in his hands can lead to surprising outcomes,” Pazit Ziv said. “The indirect conversation between the doll and the adult can help the shy kid talk about something intimate. For him, it is not himself that does the talking–it’s the doll.”

Storylines and sketches for all three books and a full-size version of the first book have been created, but the husband and wife team hope to pay for professional illustrations, art editing, printing and shipment through crowd funding.

A campaign to get funding through Kickstarter in September fell through, but the couple is trying again to get their project off the ground via gofundme.com. They hope the series will fill what they saw as a hole in the children’s books market.

“Our 7-year-old loves it and asks for more and more books,” Guy Ziv said. “We are hoping this can actually be something kids come to love.”

More in News

An Anaheim tagging crew member accused of stabbing a 12-year-old rival to death testified on Monday that he acted in self-defense and denied claims by a prosecutor that he yelled “Die! Die! Die!” as he delivered the fatal blows.